10 Movies That Changed Your Mind About Actors You Hated

6. Magnolia - Tom Cruise

Even the most outspoken Tom Cruise detractors would probably argue that his turn in Paul Thomas Anderson's strange and haunting ensemble drama Magnolia is something extraordinary. The actor, who continues to divide audiences everywhere (but still pulls in big box office numbers), plays a motivational speaker called Frank Mackey, and what's most noticeable about the performance is in just how... well, very un-Tom Cruise it is. There is something mysterious, honest, heartbreaking and terrifying in each and every single one of his line deliveries. Which is to say, if this performance doesn't convince you that Tom Cruise can act, nothing will. Before Magnolia, of course, Cruise was mostly associated with action movie roles and a few dramas (for which he had received acclaim), but none of those jobs were quite so transformative as the one on show here. Seriously, if you still - for some reason - think Tom Cruise is a weird and untalented hack, search for a clip of him in this movie. For many movie-goers, seeing the Top Gun actor inhabiting Frank Mackey proved to be something of an opinion-changer.